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Install the Family Shield

The dashboard decides the rules. This extension is the part that enforces them — a web page cannot block anything on youtube.com, only something running inside the browser can. Two steps, about two minutes, and it is free. You will not need to copy any codes.

Looking for the shield…This updates on its own — leave the page open while you install.

1Download the shield

One folder, about 40 KB. It is not on the Chrome Web Store yet, so it installs the way extensions are installed before they are listed — nothing unusual, and nothing to pay.

You get a file called novaclip-family-shield.zip. Unzip it — most computers do that when you double-click — and you are left with one folder called novaclip-family-shield. That folder is the whole thing; there is nothing to find inside it.

The download did not work / I would rather get it from GitHub
Download the whole site as a ZIP Browse the files

Going this way you get the entire site, and the folder you want is the one called extension inside it — not the whole download. That extra step is exactly what the button above exists to remove.

2Add it to your browser

  1. Open the extensions page. It cannot be opened from a link — Chrome does not allow it — so copy the address and paste it into the address bar:
    chrome://extensions
  2. Turn on Developer mode — the switch in the top right corner.
  3. Click Load unpacked, and choose the novaclip-family-shield folder you unzipped.

That is it. The shield tells this page it has arrived, and the strip at the top of this page turns green by itself — you do not have to copy the ID Chrome shows, or come back and paste anything.

Edge and Brave work exactly the same way, with edge://extensions or brave://extensions. Firefox and Safari use a different extension format and are not supported yet.

3Pairing — nothing to do

The shield introduces itself to this page as soon as it is installed, and the dashboard remembers it from then on. This step used to ask you to copy a 32-character code out of Chrome; it does not any more.

Pair it by hand instead

Only needed if the automatic pairing cannot happen — for example if you are reading this on a different computer from the one the shield is installed on. On the Chrome extensions page, the shield's ID is the long string of letters under its name.

4Set your rules

Back on the Family Dashboard, unlock with your PIN, choose the age profile and the categories, then press Save and send to the shield. Do that after every change — the shield only hears about rules you send it.

Open the Family Dashboard

What it does, and what it does not

The shield reads the text a platform puts on screen — titles, channel names, descriptions, search terms — on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitch, and hides or blocks what matches your rules. That covers the three ways a child actually reaches bad content: searching for it, being recommended it, and clicking it.

It does not watch the video, so a clean title on a bad video can still get through. It is a filter, not a guarantee, and it is not a substitute for knowing what your kid watches.